Another month, another report of another trans woman apparently murdered. The monotonous regularity of these violent hate crimes against trans women doesn’t decrease, does it? I’ve just been reading about a court case currently under way at the Old Bailey here in London. Robyn Browne, a trans woman, was stabbed to death in 1997 and the man accused of her murder (James Hopkins) seems to be claiming that he did it for a fee of £500 (around $750) which he’d been offered by drug dealers in exchange for stealing Ms Browne’s address book. Because apparently she was also a sex worker who was blackmailing her “famous clients”.

In the Third Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980, the American Psychiatric Association explained the reasons for removing the diagnostic category of homosexuality.